Interdisciplinary Conference, Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, 14-15 November 2013

woensdag 11 september 2013

Program

Over the past decades, ‘classical republicanism’
has become an indispensable term of analysis in scholarship on the
history of early modern political thought. The importance of the
classical world to republican theorists from the Renaissance to the
Enlightenment, from Machiavelli to Madison, has been firmly established.
Yet all too often the role of the ancient world in early modern
republican thought is described in rather abstract and general terms.
Much work therefore remains to be done on the specific ways in which
particular classical models were used in early modern republican
contexts.

This conference studies the role of concrete andspecific ancient republican models in the political thought of early modern republics.
It focuses on the ways in which ancient republics such as the
Hebrew Commonwealth, Athens, Sparta, Carthage and Rome helped shape the
republican political imagination in the Italian city-state republics,
the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Republic of the United
Provinces, the English Republic under Cromwell, and the revolutionary
republics of the late eighteenth century, including the USA. Bringing
together scholars from different backgrounds, the conference crosses disciplinary boundaries and integrates the approaches of historians, art historians and literary historians.

Thursday 14 November10h Welcome and Introduction

10.15-12.45

Benjamin Straumann (NYU) – The Roman Republican Constitution from the Principate to the RenaissanceJacques Bos (Amsterdam) – The Model of Rome in Florentine Historiography and the Problem of Renaissance HistoricismWilliam Stenhouse (Yeshiva University) – Republican Models in Late Renaissance Histories of Ancient Greece

13.45-15.15Guido Bartolucci (University of Calabria) – The Hebrew Republic in the Political Debate of Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Struggle for JurisdictionArthur Weststeijn (Rome) – Commonwealths for Preservation, Commonwealths for Increase: Debating Ancient Rome in Venice and the Dutch Republic

15.30-17hJaap Nieuwstraten (Rotterdam) – A League of Cities, a League of Nations: The Use of the Classical Example of the Achaean League in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch RepublicThomas Maissen (Heidelberg/Paris) – The Classical Past in the Swiss Confederation

Friday 15 November

10-12.30hTomasz Gromelski (Oxford) – ‘Classical Republicanism’ and Early Modern Poland-LithuaniaFreyja Cox Jensen (Exeter) – Reading the Roman Republic in Early Modern EnglandChristine Zabel (Heidelberg/Essen) – From a Failed Republic to a Polite Polis: Ancient Athens and the English Commonwealth

15.15-16.45hDaniele di Bartolomeo (Teramo) – Fatal Attraction. The Classical Past at the Beginning of the French Revolutionary Republic (1792-1793)Wessel Krul (Groningen) – Images of Sparta in the French Revolution